It is so important to make a practice of this. At least once a year, go to www.annualcreditreport.com or call 877-322-8228, to obtain your credit report from each of the three reporting agencies: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. You should consistently be on the lookout for unsuspecting items that creep up that could damage your rating. If your credit score is bad, it could keep you from buying a house, a car, taking out a loan, obtain a credit card or interfere with getting a job. To make matters worse, you might not know about your bad credit score, until the precise moment when you desperately need it the most.
Perhaps you are one of those lucky people, who are assured in knowing your credit score is exceptional. You pay all your bills on time, have had good credit for some time, pay more than the minimum balance due, etc. Still, there are things that may happen that can jeopardize your credit rating. An administrator may err in their reporting. A payment might have been owed that you have long since forgotten about that is now rearing its ugly head. Worse yet, identity thieves may have somehow gotten access to your bank account, credit card or social security number. All these things could happen, without your knowledge. Unless you check your credit report on an annual basis, you may not learn of these glitches in your history, until the time comes where having good credit is crucial.
Should you find a problem with your report, here are some recommendations:
- Write a letter stating what the discrepancy is, why you believe it to be in error, and ask that it be amended or expunged.
- It is recommended that you circle the items in error on the report and include with the letter. Make a copy of both and keep for your records.
- Send this to the credit bureaus that need to make the change through “certified mail” with a “return receipt requested”. This way, you have record that the mailing was received, a date and a time.
- Then, you must contact any creditors involved and go through the same correspondence-process, as mentioned above.
As far as indisputable bad credit, only time can remove that from the report. This is what the FTC has to say on this matter:
“A credit reporting company can report most accurate negative information for seven years and bankruptcy information for 10 years. Information about an unpaid judgment against you can be reported for seven years or until the statute of limitations runs out, whichever is longer. There is no time limit on reporting: information about criminal convictions; information reported in response to your application for a job that pays more than $75,000 a year; and information reported because you’ve applied for more than $150,000 worth of credit or life insurance.”
To protect yourself from becoming a victim of bad credit, of course, you need to pay your bills on time. Apart from that, take the time to request your free annual credit report, either by phone or website. It doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t take a whole lot of time. Make sure the numbers are accurate, your address, name, and other pertinent information. You may be in for a few surprises. Unless you take the first BIG step in asking for the report, you may never know, until it’s too late. Don’t delay!
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/travistruman/2611321127/”>TravisTruman</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photo pin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>cc</a>
I would like to check credit history
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I have been a Capital One client since 1998 and not use this account since circa 2005, transferring funds to Chase credit card. The Capital One was available but inactive.
February 2012
I received a telephone call from Capital One and told there was suspicious activity regarding my card. The Capital One representative stated a female was attempting to request permission to sign on to my card and the female requested the invoice be forwarded to her address. The Capital One representative asked if I could identify the female. I stated Marisa Soto, he concurred and I changed the oral password at that time. The January 2012 statement reflected $1500.00 was misappropriated from the credit card without permission.
I filed a police report with Missouri City Police case # 12-2101. It was transferred to City of Houston detective due to jurisdiction of thief.
March 2012
Marisa again confiscated my credit card information and Capital One contacted me about its usage. A Capital One representative escalated from dialogue to shouting, accusing me of thief and for me just to pay.
It will be on voice recorded conversation I explained everything to them from the very beginning. Marisa’s addiction, her eidetic memory, and the fact she’s my daughter and lived at my house she may have certain information pertaining about me that she could use against me. Ergo in April 2012, my last oral password I placed a most ambiguous password tag, intersection.
May 2012
Marisa deciphered my password intersection and once gained access to my account. She spent $7677.43 in one month wherein you seized $1700 from my bank account and will return it until the thief charge Capital One is not cooperating with Sugar Land authorities to complete the investigation.
Capital One has not held up their fiduciary responsibilities with me but rather yielded to a manipulator.
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Thanks for the vital info. I believe that people should check their credit rating at least once a year.
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This is so true. Once you check your credit rating and see it is fine, or make any amendments to improve your score, it’s so easy to forget to check. In that time a whole manner of problems could be causing a poor credit rating, whereas monitoring your credit means any errors or negative actions can be dealt with swiftly.
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How do I build credit when I have no credit history? I’ve applied for credit cards and loans, but was never approved due to having “No Credit History”.
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I received a letter from Capital One P.O. Box 30277, Salt Lake City, UT, Concerning a possible fraudulent Capital One account using some or all of my personal information.
This letter was allegedly from Customer Fraud Protection Ph. # 800-239-7054.
I responded as requested but wonder if my personal accounts are in jerpody?
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Thank you for deviewing my request.
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This article was awesome!! Thank you. Being fairly new to the credit repair arena I am constantly trying to gather as much information as possible to try and keep myself headed in the right general direction. Spending some time on this post has actually given me a lot of great points to think about. In my recent research I have also been able to find some pretty useful information related to this topic when I Googled the credit locker university. This was helpful as well. Thanks again!
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Thank you, Alex! I’m so glad this post was beneficial. Have a great day!
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